dance/lens is an interdisciplinary course that will engage in both choreographic inquiry, creation and feedback, as well as learning narrative, dynamic, and personal approaches to creating dance for screen. A team-taught course by veteran choreographer and mentor Alexandra Beller and trailblazer in the field of screen dance, Cara Hagan, this 6-week workshop will allow you to begin and complete a short dance for film. 

We are interested in the opportunities available in creating for the screen, in particular the application of magic. We want to develop the unique possibilities of using the lens and the camera while deeply challenging ourselves as choreographers. We are committed to fostering both the choreographic and film-making perspectives equally and in intimate partnership with one another. 

Through a series of tasks, prompts, conversations, feedback sessions, bolstered by readings and viewings, this course promises to sharpen the eye, develop critical skills in dramaturgy, and pose challenging questions to artists at every stage of experience. The particular opportunities and obstacles of transforming the three dimensional world to a two dimensional experience requires questioning power, privilege, and using storytelling in a unique way. 

Week One:

Invention, developing the conversation between body and frame

Week Two:

Vision, finding the body’s reason to create

Week Three:

Translation, moving between 3D and 2D

Week Four:

Communication: making choices that mean something

Week Five:

Possibility, imagining the radical spectrum of decision

final showing

Offerings, defining, developing, and coalescing for an audience Showing: a chance to share your work with the public 

PAYMENT PLANS AVAILABLE: please contact educationabdances@gmail.com

Alexandra Beller

Alexandra Beller is Artistic Director of Alexandra Beller/Dances, which is currently celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. As a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company from 1995-2001, she performed in over 50 countries and throughout the U.S. In 2004-05 she helped to create “The Belle Epoch,” (Martha Clarke and Charles Mee). She was a 2-year Artist in Residence at HERE, and has also been an AIR at Dance New Amsterdam and DMAC. 

Alexandra’s choreography has been presented at and commissioned by Dance Theater Workshop, La MaMa, Institute for Contemporary Art (Boston), The Yard (Martha's Vineyard), 92nd St. Y, Aaron Davis Hall, Danspace Project at St. Mark's, Abron’s Art Center, Joyce SoHo, P.S. 122, WAX, HERE, The Connelly Theater, SUNY Purchase College, Dance New Amsterdam, Symphony Space, and Jacob’s Pillow and has been commissioned by companies in Arizona, Michigan, Texas, Korea, Hong Kong, Oslo, Cyprus, Maine, New York City, Florida, Boston, Rhode Island, New Jersey and elsewhere. Her company has toured to the Open Look Festival in St. Petersburg, Bytom Festival in Poland and throughout Michigan, Massachusetts and New York State, and received The Company Residency at The Yard in 2004 .

Alexandra co-created the Choreographic Investigation Course at Dance New Amsterdam, and curated the Modern Guest Artist Series at Dance New Amsterdam and the Contemporary Forms Series at Gibney Dance Center. She is on faculty at Gibney Dance Center, and Mark Morris Dance Center,  and frequently teaches Technique, Composition, Improvisation and other classes through her Company, and at Universities throughout the United States.

She was a visiting artist at APA, CCDC, and DanceArt in Hong Kong, D-Dance Festival in Korea, Den Nordsk Balletthoskole in Oslo, Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, and Cyprus Summer Festival in Nicosia. She was a guest choreographer at numerous Universities throughout the US including University of Michigan, Rhode Island College, Princeton, The University of South Florida, MIT, Texas Woman's University, Connecticut College, Texas Christian University, and Bates College, among others, and received an NCCI commission from Montclair State University in 2003/2004.

Film performance work includes “Romance and Cigarettes” by John Turturro. In 2000, she was also the subject of a series of photographs by Irving Penn, "Dancer,” which have toured internationally and are on permanent exhibition at Smithsonian Museum (DC) and Whitney Museum (NYC).

Beller frequently choreographs for Theatre productions including the critically acclaimed off-Broadway show "Bedlam's Sense and Sensibility," for which she was nominated for a Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography, "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (Eric Tucker, director) for Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, "As You Like It" (GT Upchurch, director) for Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, "Chang (e)" (Suzi Takahashi, director) for HERE, "How to Transcend a Happy Marriage" (Rebecca Taichman, director), and movement coaching for Taylor Mac, Theatre Askew, Dael Orlandersmith, and others.

Cara Hagan

Cara Hagan is a mover, maker, writer, curator, champion of just communities, and a dreamer. She believes in the power of art to upend the laws of time and physics, a necessary occurrence in pursuit of liberation. In her work, no object or outcome is sacred; but the ritual to get there is. Hagan’s adventures take place as live performance, on screen, as installation, on the page, and in collaboration with others in a multitude of contexts.

In recent years, Hagan and her work have traveled to such gatherings as the Performática Festival in Cholula, Mexico, the Conference on Geopoetics in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Loikka Dance Film Festival in Helsinki, Finland, the Taos Poetry Festival in Taos, New Mexico, and to the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Extended residencies have taken place at Thirak India in Jaipur, India, Playa Summer Lake in the dynamic outback of Oregon, Roehampton University in London, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of North Carolina, School of the Arts.

Cara is grateful to have received financial support from various organizations and institutions to continue her work. Recent support has included the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron where she was named the inaugural Community Commissioning Residency Artist for the 2020/2021 season. Past support has come from the Dance Films Association, the Filmed in NC Fund, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Forsyth County Arts Council, the Appalachian State University Research Council, the Watauga County Arts Council, and Betty’s Daughter Arts.

Since becoming a parent and navigating a global pandemic, Hagan’s work takes place a bit closer to home these days. She is working on a new book titled, Ritual Activism. She had the pleasure of being one of the first artists to be in residence since the pandemic at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC in June and July of 2021 where her interdisciplinary project, Essential Parts: A Guide to Moving through Crisis and Unbridled Joy is installed until 2022.

Hagan is editor and contributor to the anthology Practicing Yoga as Resistance: Voices of Color in Search of Freedom, published in 2021 by Routledge. Hagan is author of the book Screendance from Film to Festival: Celebration and Curatorial practice, published in 2022 by McFarland. Cara Joined the faculty of The New School in 2022 and works as Associate Professor and Program Director for the MFA in Contemporary Theatre Performance.